Jan. 3, 2006—EDGEHAVEN—
Friday’s heavy snow turned to ice on Saturday and left treacherous driving conditions throughout the high-elevation mountain roads.
There were reports of power outages across the county. In addition, in connection to a car accident on Plateau Road late Saturday, a female Edgehaven Central High School senior, 17, was reported missing.
Witnesses say the girl had been a passenger in a car that collided with the guardrail, but she could not be located in the wreckage. “We can’t help but hope someone came along and pulled her from the car. But she hasn’t been checked into any local hospital and her family hasn’t heard a word,” Sheriff Arnold F.
Wymes said in a statement to the public on Monday. “If she wandered out on her own . . . it’s not likely she’d have survived the elements.” A search is still under way.
The public is asked to report any information to the Edgehaven Police Department. The northern pass of Plateau Road is closed to nonemergency traffic until further notice.
— 22 — THE new girl, Natalie, had inherited the eyes. The ones on her mother’s side, paler than a pair of eyes should be. They looked to be coated in a thick layer of ice, and only if you chipped through would you find the person they belonged to, the girl shivering beneath.
These eyes were exactly like her mother’s,
who
was
serving
two
consecutive life sentences at a women’s correctional facility four hours away, and would never get out, not in her lifetime.
Natalie had not once gone to visit the prison to look into the frigid eyes of the woman responsible for bringing her into the world. Even if those eyes would be held back behind a wall of clouded glass lathered on both sides by the links of the metal cage that encased it. Natalie was afraid it would be like looking off into the far distance, into a future she didn’t want to see. Like mother like daughter, people always said. They assumed, but they should have asked, because looks are deceiving sometimes. Eyes can be.
I first saw Natalie’s eyes for myself on a cold January morning while I was combing out the rat’s nest of my hair.
That was the first day of the new semester, and I had to get to school.
I was looking in the mirror, trying to get the comb in and the knots out, but the knots had caught themselves on the teeth of the comb, getting more tangled the more I tried to pull it through.
I’d had the dream again in the night.
Fiona Burke hadn’t been there. I didn’t see Abby, either. But there’d been someone in the smoky house with me, up a set of stairs, around a corner, a shadow that leaked out from the other shadows, reaching out one beckoning, outstretched hand.
I’d woken in my bed as if I’d spent the night clawing my way up a riverbank— drenched through my clothes, muscles sore, hair tangled in sweat—though the dream had been very dry. Dry and hot, as if somewhere the fire was still burning.
I took one last look at my tangled head in the mirror and decided to do something about it. With the comb still wedged in, I found the scissors, the good ones not made for cutting paper, and I just started chopping around the comb, snipping shorter than I meant to, and then needing to cut shorter still to make up for a crooked spot. The haircut was DIY, it was daring, and it brought out my eyes.
Someone else’s eyes.
I flinched. Something had happened to my face. The mirror was showing a second face projected over my own. Her face hovered, lit up like a round and glowing moon.